Motus Wildlife Tracking System

Motus Wildlife Tracking System project is coordinated by Birds Canada, and now includes hundreds of collaborating institutions, agencies and independent researchers.  With small Motus towers in place from Nunavut, Canada to Chile, more than 22,000 animals representing more than 200 species, including songbirds, raptors, seabirds, bats, monarch butterflies and migratory dragonflies, have been tagged by dozens of participant researchers. See Motus by the Numbers for more information. 

Motus' goal is to combine individual research projects into a massive, collaborative, coordinated, hemispheric network of VHF nanotag receiver stations, allowing researchers to track the movements of flying animals too small to support traditional satellite or GPS telemetry. All participants use a single shared radio frequency, shared infrastructure, a shared database and (within reason) shared results. Movement tracks are presented on the Motus website for public education in a way that does not jeopardize the publications or research interests of the individual cooperators. 

Nanotag transmitters currently weigh as little as 0.3g and all operate on 166.380 Mhz, emitting a coded microburst pulse that allows each individual tag to be instantly identified. Using the coded ID system, the receiver stations do not have to cycle through many different frequencies to locate a tagged animal—and any organism wearing a nanotag can be detected and continually tracked at any receiver station. 

Dual Mode Stations

In 2019 the Northeast Motus Collaboration expanded each new station to dual mode - receiving Lotek Nanotags (166.38 Mhz) and CTT Lifetags (433 Mhz). All data is As new technologies get developed researchers need to be able to use the tech that best fits their research question. By installing dual-mode receiving stations, we hope to not only increase the versatility of the network, make the scale and collaborative nature of the Motus WTS available to as many researchers as possible.